CHICAGO — A Chicago-area man has been charged with running a group of prostitutes, including underage girls, who walked the streets of New York, Hollywood, Honolulu and other cities, authorities announced Tuesday.

“So what? Some of my best girls were minors,” Jody L. Spears, about 35, whose last known address was in suburban Schaumburg, was quoted as saying in an FBI affidavit prosecutors filed in U.S. District Court.

Spears was arrested July 14 in a suburb outside Cleveland as part of an ongoing federal investigation federal officials have dubbed Innocence Lost. It focuses on an interstate prostitution ring headed by a pimp who went under the nickname Blue Diamond.

Others accused of being part of the ring have been charged in Hawaii, Michigan and Chicago. The 25-page affidavit was unsealed Tuesday when Spears made a court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez. She continued the case to Thursday after defense attorney Luis Galvan, a federal defender, told her that Spears is attempting to get in touch with another lawyer.

Galvan said Spears indicated he has too much money to qualify for an attorney appointed by the court to defend him at government expense.

According to the affidavit, one young woman told agents she and Spears lived for a year in an apartment in Chicago’s Marina City owned by downtown dentist Gary S. Kimmel and received dental services from him.

Kimmel is facing federal charges that he accepted $405,000 from two pimps to buy, finance, insure and maintain luxury autos, including a Corvette and a Mercedes-Benz. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Various women were quoted in the affidavit as saying that Spears took them to New York, Las Vegas, Honolulu and other cities to work as prostitutes. One woman said Spears sent her to Los Angeles and told her to get a room in Hollywood and “work on Sunset Boulevard” to earn money.

She did – and landed in jail for two weeks, the affidavit said.

The female witnesses quoted in the affidavit said Spears sometimes had them walk seedy prostitution tracks where patrons always knew they would be able to make contact.

One said Spears was upset when she came back from Memphis without enough money because her feet had hurt and she couldn’t walk the track.

Women said they started working for Spears when they were 16 or 17 years old, and one girl told of starting out as a prostitute at age 14 and working for an associate of Spears when she was 15.

Officials said that the maximum sentence for recruiting and transporting underage girls for prostitution under federal law is life in prison.